Public release date: 20-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Erika Matich erika.matich@ucdenver.edu 303-524-2780 University of Colorado Denver AURORA, Colo. (June 20, 2012) -AURORA, COLO (June 20, 2012) -- Modern cancer therapies start in cells researchers compare cancer samples to healthy cells to discover how cancer is genetically different, and use cell lines to test promising new drugs. However, a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Gynecologic Oncology shows that due to a high rate of contamination, misidentification and redundancy in widely available cell lines, researchers may be drawing faulty conclusions. "I've seen faculty and graduate students leave my lab in tears when we discovered the cells on the label weren't the cells they were actually experimenting on," says Christopher Korch, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and director of the center's DNA Sequencing and Analysis Service, the paper's co-first author. "When you get a cell line, you have to look that gift horse in the mouth there's up to a 40 percent chance it's a Trojan horse, not what it says it is." For example, the cell line known as HES has been widely used as a "normal" model of endometrial … Continue reading →

Public release date: 21-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Scott LaFee slafee@ucsd.edu 619-543-6163 University of California - San Diego Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered a new signal transduction pathway specifically devoted to the regulation of alternative RNA splicing, a process that allows a single gene to produce or code multiple types of protein variants. The discovery, published in the June 27, 2012 issue of Molecular Cell, suggests the new pathway might be a fruitful target for new cancer drugs. Signal transduction in the cell involves kinases and phosphatases, enzymes that transfer or remove phosphates in protein molecules in a cascade or pathway. SRPK kinases, first described by Xiang-Dong Fu, PhD, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego in 1994, are involved in controlling the activities of splicing regulators in mammalian cells. Prior studies have implicated SRPK1 in cancer and other human diseases. For example, it has been shown that SRPK1 plays a critical role in regulating the function of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor or VEGF, which stimulates blood vessel growth in cancer. SRPK1 has been found to be dysregulated in a number of cancers, from kidney and … Continue reading →

ScienceDaily (June 21, 2012) Modern cancer therapies start in cells -- researchers compare cancer samples to healthy cells to discover how cancer is genetically different, and use cell lines to test promising new drugs. However, a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Gynecologic Oncology shows that due to a high rate of contamination, misidentification and redundancy in widely available cell lines, researchers may be drawing faulty conclusions. "I've seen faculty and graduate students leave my lab in tears when we discovered the cells on the label weren't the cells they were actually experimenting on," says Christopher Korch, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and director of the center's DNA Sequencing and Analysis Service, the paper's co-first author. "When you get a cell line, you have to look that gift horse in the mouth -- there's up to a 40 percent chance it's a Trojan horse, not what it says it is." For example, the cell line known as HES has been widely used as a "normal" model of endometrial cells since its development in 1989. There are literally hundreds of papers that, for example, look for differences between endometrial cancer cells and these … Continue reading →